As a small business owner, there comes a time when you can no longer do it all. The business is experiencing unprecedented growth, but you don’t have the human resources experience to manage the people function. But, you know you need to do something about recruiting, employee exits, and everything in between. In this blog, I outline some signs it may be time for you to reach out to an HR consulting firm to help you scale and manage your people function.
1. You Need Help in the Recruitment Process
Finding the right people for your business is critical as you grow. As a business owner, it’s daunting to find talent in an incredibly complex and competitive job market. If you’re stuck about where to start in your recruitment process, it’s time you consider working with an HR consultant. An outsourced HR professional can manage the entirety of the employee lifecycle, starting with recruitment.
Through Recruitment Process Outsourcing, or RPO, we work with business leaders to craft appealing and accurate job descriptions. We implement our proven behaviorally-based interview process, training your managers in compliant and effective interview techniques. We do it all while saving your company money because we don’t charge a commission for our placements like a traditional recruiter or placement firm. When we own the recruitment process from beginning to end, we save business owners time, because we properly vet candidates before they make it to the final interview with you. This allows you to get back to the business of growing your business.
2. You Struggle with Employee Retention
The next greatest risk for employers as they grow their business, after finding the right talent, is keeping their top performers. You’ve worked hard to get the right people in the right seats, so it makes sense you don’t want to lose them. How do you retain employees in the current job market?
First, it’s critical you understand why they are leaving. To develop an effective retention strategy, a company needs to have data to drive its decision-making. Effective exit interviews help businesses gather that data (not just anecdotal evidence) to change, update, or refine business practices to retain their workforce. Human resources consultants have practical experience in conducting exit interviews to get actionable data from departing employees a business needs to improve its workforce retention efforts.
How does Red Clover specifically help businesses with retention issues? We provide solutions that address the most common causes of attrition in your company.
Compensation
Employees often cite their pay as their reason for departure. We help companies develop salary structures and a compensation strategy based on their current pay practices and market comparison. Additionally, we encourage salary transparency and help companies communicate their approach to pay with their employees, without completely opening up the books.
Company Culture
Employees want to work for a company where they feel connected to their work. Employees feel more connected to their company when their values align with company values. Those values influence your company culture. Employees begin searching for their next opportunity when there isn’t a strong company culture or the business acts in a way that isn’t aligned with their stated core values. It’s time for your leaders to work with a skilled HR professional in evaluating your company culture and developing core values that resonate with your team and are used to retain and engage employees, rather than serving as a cause for attrition.
Flexible Scheduling and Remote Work
If your team was productive when the pandemic required companies to go remote, it stands it will remain productive now. Employees want flexible scheduling and remote work options. If your company isn’t able to provide remote or hybrid work, employees will search for employers who do. It’s possible to make the shift to flexible scheduling and remote/hybrid work permanent by committing to success being based on deliverables, not on presence. It does require a mindset shift, and skilling up managers – but it’s possible. Work with a team like Red Clover to navigate the adjustment. Otherwise, you’re at risk of losing talent as they find companies willing to offer greater flexibility.
3. You Take Action Reactively Instead of Proactively
As a growing business, it’s easy to focus on the issues right in front of you, rather than the potential problems that could happen six months down the line. There isn’t enough time to worry about what may happen when you need to focus on what is happening right now. You may not need to fire an employee now, but imagine the peace of mind that comes with having an expert HR professional embedded in your organization who can provide support when it happens. Partnering with an HR consultant who understands the employee lifecycle helps your company develop scalable and repeatable processes to address immediate issues as well as events that may happen in the future.
4. Your Team Has Trouble with Communication
The most common cause of conflict among teams is communication. Generally, conflict arises when two people with different communication styles work together. You have someone on your team who is direct and prefers yes or no answers working with someone who prefers details and context before answering a question. These disparate styles can cause stress and frustration, and when we’re under stress, we’re more likely to find ourselves in conflict.
Short of outright negligence, workplace bullying, or harassment and discrimination, most workplace conflicts can be solved. If we accept the fact that the root of most conflict is a communication issue, we proactively reduce the opportunity for conflict by understanding the preferred communication styles of everyone in an organization. Through DISC, Driving Forces and EQ assessments, companies can better understand the communication styles, motivators, and emotional intelligence of their workforce. Through debriefs with a certified HR provider, like Red Clover, your employees learn about their preferred communication and behavioral styles and how they can adapt to better work with their team members, thus avoiding miscommunication and conflict.
5. Your Company Is Rapidly Expanding
One of the exciting things for small businesses is when they find themselves growing rapidly. But, how do you keep up? As you sign more clients, you need to grow your workforce, and fast! You also need to update and refine processes, because what worked for 10 people isn’t sustainable for 75 people. When it comes to scaling your people function, working with a competent HR team with direct, practical experience in managing teams through change makes all the difference. As your fractional, outsourced HR leaders, we provide strategic support as a member of your leadership team, helping you maintain momentum and keep pace with your business growth. And we do it at the fraction of the cost of a full-time, senior-level HR employee.
6. You Have Difficulty Managing Employees and Goals
You’ve built your team, but you have no idea how to manage them. You can see the business is successful (and making money!), but you don’t know how to connect employee performance to business success. An HR consulting team develops milestones, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs) against which you can evaluate performance. Additionally, they implement and execute a continuous performance management process that influences ongoing employee success. We’ve helped companies in improving their performance management rhythms and the quality of discussions while also providing training to new managers as they transition from individual contributors to their new management roles.
7. You Struggle with Noncompliance
Employment law is constantly evolving. Businesses have adapted to virtual work opportunities by expanding into multiple states. Compliance becomes a greater issue for businesses as headcount growth triggers certain state and federal laws. HR mistakes can be costly. It can be difficult for a business owner without HR experience to keep it all straight!
That’s a sure sign it’s time to partner with an HR consultant. They bring their extensive knowledge of human resources to help you develop your policies, practices, and procedures that guide the employee experience. By developing an employee handbook in tandem with business leaders, they help mitigate risk while still creating business processes that support the employee experience.
Work With an Experienced New Jersey HR Consultant
Red Clover has direct experience working with small and medium-sized businesses; helping business owners scale through innovative people solutions and complete HR process overhauls. Across all industries, we’ve partnered with business leaders to help them scale their businesses and their people function because every business decision you make has a direct impact on your people. If after reading this blog, you’re seeing any of the seven signs I talk about above – it’s time you reach out to us and let us help!
